Strategic knowledge management for interdisciplinary teams-overcoming barriers of interdisciplinary work via an online portal approach

Abstract

Interdisciplinary collaboration and its success is still not fully understood. In two explorative studies we examine both the existence of benefits and barriers of interdisciplinary collaboration as well as the leverage of a social portal to support benefits and lower the barriers of such cooperations. As core issues we identified problems of language and missing depth as the strongest barriers in a triangulation of qualitative (N=6) and quantitative results (N=45). In contrast we found intrinsic motivation and widening of one’s horizon as well as the combination of knowledge as key benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration. In the second interview study (N=5) we found that our social platform approach could address theses barriers and leverage the benefits from the first study.